FORT BRAG, North Carolina – An independent commission on Tuesday recommended new names for nine Army posts marking Confederate officers, including the change from Fort Bragg in North Carolina to Fort Liberty.
The recommendations are the latest step in a broader military effort to counter racial injustice, most recently since the May 2020 police assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Fort Bragg in North Carolina is currently named after General Braxton Bragg, a senior general in the Confederate Army. It will be renamed Fort Liberty, the only one of the bases named after the concept, and the other eight will be renamed mainly to those connected with the history of the army.
SEE ALSO: The story behind the naming of Fort Bragg as the Pentagon is considering a renaming based
The list recommends naming bases for the first time for women and black soldiers.
Fort Polk, Louisiana, will be renamed Fort Johnson, after Sergeant. William Henry Johnson, winner of the Black Medal of Honor, served in the Army during World War I.
Fort AP Hill in Virginia will be renamed Fort Walker, after Mary Edwards Walker, a physician who treated soldiers in the Civil War and later received an Medal of Honor.
Other bases to be renamed are Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Rucker in Alabama, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, and Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia.
The panel recommended that Fort Hood, Texas, be renamed Richard E. Cavazos, the first Latin American to reach the rank of four-star general in the military.
Fort Gordon, Georgia, will be renamed General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Army General who led all Allied forces in Europe during World War II and later became President.
Fort Lee, Virginia, will be named after two people: Arthur Greg, a former three-star logistics general – the only living person to be named base – and Charity Adams, the first African-American to be an officer in the United States. auxiliary corps of the women’s army. Fort Pickett, Virginia, will be named after Van Barfoot, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism during World War II and is of Native American descent.
Fort Benning, Georgia, will be renamed Lieutenant General Hal Moore, a pioneer in the air cavalry whose Vietnam-era history was mentioned in the book and film We Were Soldiers.
Fort Rucker, Alabama, will be named after Michael Novosel, a Medal of Honor who flew fighter jets during World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
For years, U.S. military personnel defended the name of Confederate officers’ bases. As early as 2015, the army claimed that the names were not in honor of the rebel cause, but a gesture of reconciliation with the South.
But after the assassination of Floyd and the ensuing months of racial unrest, Congress pushed for a comprehensive plan to rename military posts and hundreds of other federal assets such as roads, buildings, monuments, signs and landmarks that honor rebel leaders.
The change in military thinking was reflected in the testimony in Congress of Army General Mark Millie, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a month after Floyd’s death. He said the main names could remind black soldiers that rebel officers were fighting for an institution that may have enslaved their ancestors.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin – the country’s first Black Pentagon chief – spoke directly about his personal suffering with racism. During a Senate confirmation hearing, he said he served as a lieutenant colonel in the 82nd Airborne Forces at Fort Bragg when three white soldiers described as self-proclaimed skinheads were arrested in the killing of a black couple walking down the street.
Investigators concluded that the two were targeted because of their race, and a total of 22 soldiers were linked to skinheads and other similar groups or were found to have extremist views.
The current head of the Air Force, General Charles K. Brown, posted an emotional video last June discussing the difficulties he experienced as a young black pilot. Brown, the first commander of the Black Air Force, said he had to work very hard to prove to white supervisors “that their expectations and perceptions of African Americans are invalid.”
Established in 2020, the Naming Commission met for the first time in March 2021 and began adopting recommendations for names from the public in September. In total, the commission has received more than 34,000 potential names, which it says includes about 3,670 unique names that could possibly be used. This list was later narrowed to about 100 names before the last nine were chosen to be recommended to Congress.
At the time, the committee said its mandate was to select names that “adequately reflect the courage, values, sacrifices and demographics of men and women in our armed forces, taking into account the local or regional significance of the names and their potential to inspire and motivate the military. “
The panel is also considering new names for two Navy ships: USS Chancellorsville and USNS Maury.
The final report is due in Congress by October 1 and will include the cost of removing and changing names. According to the law, the Minister of Defense is expected to implement the plan of the commission no later than January 1, 2024.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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